Injoji Temple (Senbon Enmado Hall)
[HEIAN / KITANO-NISHIJIN]
In Buddhist cosmology, the underworld is ruled by a deity known as Enma, who passes judgment on the souls of the dead. Injoji Temple is dedicated to the worship of Enma and has stood on its current site since the eleventh century, when this place was at the very edge of Kyoto. North of here were the city’s burial grounds, so the temple was said to mark the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead.
The main hall contains a 2.4-meter-tall statue of Enma, carved in 1488 and flanked by statues depicting his attendants: a judgment reader and a record taker. The former holds a scroll that contains all the deeds of mortal beings and is used to determine their destination in the underworld. These statues can be viewed on the 16th day of every month, or “Enma Day,” when the resident priest performs a memorial service in the hall.
As Injoji Temple conflates Enma with the bodhisattva Jizo, the savior of all sentient beings, and treats them as the same deity, many stone statues of Jizo stand outside the main hall and throughout the temple grounds. Some of these statues are hundreds of years old and have been excavated from locations along the road that once led to the burial grounds.